A lot has changed since 1997. Central European countries became the members of the European Union. But the story about the prince and the frog is still not finished. Today the prince says to the frog: “OK, I gave you a kiss, but you are still an ugly frog, not a princess! Why?” And the frog answers: “I was joking, you stupid!”
It is probably a good introduction to the problems we are discussing today – what happened to Central European countries during the last two years. Why some many of us are disappointed? I guess, this feeling started with the victory of Law and Justice Party in Poland two years ago. Then we had a comeback of nationalists and Vladimir Mečiar’s party in Slovakia. We witnessed the street riots in Budapest. And we experienced a strange situation even in the Czech Republic, where there was actually no government for more than half a year.
There was a lot of articles on this topic published in the European newspapers, whose authors tried to find a common framework for this events. The most popular answer was that this is the impact of the enlargement of the EU. People say, for example: “As long as Poles were struggling for joining the EU, they were voting for pro-European politicians. Since they have been in, they have decided to choose new guys, who will defend their national interests against the UE”.
But, in my opinion, the European Union is not responsible for the problems we face. The main factor which organises our societies and our political life is the attitude we take towards the process of westernization of our countries. This process has taken place not for the last 15 years, but for decades, maybe centuries. And there are people who are the winners, and people who are the losers. If we want this process of westernization to be continued and completed, all the parts of the society must participate in it successfully.
The nationalist governments in our countries seem to be the price we pay for it. Thanks to the democratic institutions and the EU, this price won`t be too high.
Aleksander Kaczorowski - The Price of Our Success
Sept. 27, 2011, 12:07 p.m.
There is a joke from an essay Grey is Beautiful, which was written by Adam Michnik ten years ago. The prince found a frog and it started to speak to him: “If you will give me a kiss, I will come back to my true nature, I will become a pretty princess and you will marry me”. But do you know, what the prince’s answer was? “I do not care – it is better to have a speaking frog!”. Of course, the prince was the West, or the European Union, and the frog was Central Europe, or Poland.